FAQs / Pātai Auau

You can find out more our us on our ‘What we do’ page.

We provide the following resources to help teachers kick-start their ukulele program on our resources page.

• Coloured dots system: fast success for beginners (especially for those that are new to ukulele).
• First lessons with Mr Hantler: these have been flipped around so teachers and students can mirror what he is doing
• NZUT Teacher Handbook: your step-by-step classroom guide (routines, chord progression, lesson flow).
• Tuning tips: a resource that helps with tuning ukuleles
• Mr Grey playalongs: ready-made warm-ups that support strumming and chord changes – great to have at the start of the lesson to learn and revise basic technique.
• Slow-down video tip: a great support for learning songs at a slower pace for learners who need it.
• NZ Curriculum – draft curriculum with scope and sequence to support teachers with their planning.
• The Songbank (that has been curated over the past 19 years) then allows you to select songs according to difficulty (1–2–3 chords upwards), key, and language and each song includes a songsheet + playalong/lyric-chord video – teacher can then choose to then start with the  Beginner (1 chord) songs, then move to 2 chords in the same key.
• From there, we encourage schools to get together for Kiwilele Jams, which are all about participation and enjoying making music together.
• Please note that we are an organisation entirely run by volunteers who are passionate about supporting students to realise their musical potential through the ukulele.
• Due to our funding agreements, copyright and the permissions we have from composers to use their work, we ask that you ONLY SHARE the username and password with colleagues and students at YOUR SCHOOL/KURA.

As you will see on our Ukes in Schools page, we have received amazing support from Kala Brand Music, Lyn McAllister Music , and the Wright Family Foundation for this initiative. However, this support entirely depends on our funding applications each year.

Even if you do not have a ukulele, we encourage you to register so you will be notified as soon as we have secured funding to support this initiative in 2026. Our Songbank is also a wonderful resource to support school singing!

• We don’t currently have funding for in-person PLD, but we’re planning an a series of online workshop for teachers who are getting started and will promote it soon – please check our Ngā Hui / Events page for our next workshops.
• We also encourage you to check out our resource page that has lots of tips for starting your program, and we encourage you to learn with your students (Mr Hantler’s videos are great for those first lessons and we recommend using Mr Gray’s videos at the start of every lesson to ensure those important basic chords and strums are absolutely secure.

• We can only allow one lead teacher per school to register for a login to gain access to music resources.
• The lead teacher is responsible for managing access to the site on behalf of your school via ONE username and password and they can share this username and password with colleagues and students at their school.
• Due to our funding agreements, copyright and the permissions we have from composers to use their work, we ask that you ONLY SHARE the username and password with colleagues and students at YOUR SCHOOL/KURA.

Registration is for the current year only. A school must re-register at the beginning of every year. The Lead teachers login and password will be reinstated after the Kiwileles school registration has been paid.

Your school should have a OneMusic licence that entitles you to perform music at school, take part in music festivals, photocopy music for educational purposes, produce recordings of school performances and communicate music on a school intranet. You may reproduce songs from this password protected page only in accordance with this licence. This ensures your school is copyright compliant.

The OneMusic licence is administered through the NZSTA. To obtain a licence for your school, email the NZSTA Copyright Coordinator on copyright@nzsta.org.nz, or call 0800 663 486. Check out this guide provided by OneMusic NZ.

We believe there are good reasons to ensure your school has a OneMusic licence from APRA/AMCOS.

Where appropriate, we ensure that your school’s registration fee for the NZ Kiwilele website goes to the appropriate composers / publishers and we are often thanked for our efforts to do the right thing and for respecting their music. 

“I probably won’t get caught anyway, right?” You might be right. However copyright compliance is not only a legal obligation, but a professional responsibility.

We believe it is important for teachers to demonstrate respect for copyright rules. In adopting copyright best practice, teachers promote a culture of copyright awareness and model appropriate behaviour for students.